The present invention relates to a method of adjusting ticket fares in a network of different transportation routes which can selectively be taken by a passenger carrying a single common ticket, and more particularly to a method of quickly, accurately, and effectively adjusting ticket fares among different transportation entities based on information stored in common tickets used by passengers and finally retrieved by the transportation entities.
Major cities have a network or system of interconnected transportation routes or lines such as of trains and buses run by different companies. Previously, passengers had to buy other tickets sold by different transportation companies in order to change routes. It was however quite troublesome and time-consuming for passengers to buy different tickets at transfer stations each time they change trains or buses. To eliminate the trouble and time, a system has been introduced to allow passengers who wish to take different successive routes to buy at a starting station a ticket which is effective for the routes. This ticket purchase system is highly convenient provided there is only one choice for the final transportation route since each starting station on the first route has to have only a relatively small number of tickets of different fares. However, where there are several final transportation routes (run by the same or different companies) which passengers can take, each starting station is required to have many different common tickets for each of the different final routes. Storing and dispensing such many different tickets manually or through ticket dispensers at each station is quite complex and costly. Fare adjustments among the different transportation companies involved in such a transportation network are quite complicated because many different common tickets have to be picked out from ordinary tickets, classified, and totalled. Similarly, where there are several first transportation routes (run by the same or different companies) which passengers can take, fare adjustments are also very complex to perform.
It has been proposed to introduce a ticket purchase system which will eliminate the trouble of keeping many different types of common tickets by selling tickets that can be used by passengers to freely select any desired transportation line of different transportation companies. Though the proposed ticket purchase system would be advantageous at the point of selling tickets, it would still suffer a complex fare adjustment procedure which would be laborious and subject to errors.